Aamir Khan: Founder member of the Rs.100 crore club

It is rather befitting that Aamir Khan, the founder member of the Rs.100 crore club has outdone himself with a Rs.500 crore record for Dhoom 3. In a freewheeling chat, the actor talks about his recent blockbuster, Academy Awards as a marketing tool and of course, the new season of his television show Satyamev Jayate.

Aamir, one can’t help but open the interview with a query on why the publicity of a film like Dhoom 3 was, well, scaled down?

I have always believed that the main form of publicity has to be the creative of the film itself . The creative/promo/trailer should make me feel ki yes, this is what I want to watch.This time we went a little easy on the publicity because we felt that all the hype and hoopla is becoming a little too much. However, that didn’t stop us from wondering that with the low-key publicity that we did, whether we would still get the kind of opening that we wanted.

Given the film’s Rs.500 crore collections, it certainly seems to have worked well— but did producer Aditya Chopra and you expect it to create a new benchmark? What worked in its favour?

It’s difficult to say because I think watching Dhoom is an experience — I mean a film like Dhoom 3 — I have not seen the kind of production value that Adi as a creative producer has provided to the film, anywhere else. The scale of the film is really huge in terms of the action, special-effects, songs etc. I think it’s a spectacle. The story of course, is the essence of everything so there has to be an emotional connect for people, but the spectacle has also helped.

Analysts are of the view that your star power, especially in a double role helped twice as much. Would you agree?

Dhoom 3 is essentially the love story of two brothers. You certainly don’t expect the Dhoom franchise to actually be a love story between twin brothers, but I think that is something that people connected with. And then the spectacle, stars in the film and the franchise itself.
I guess for people it was also the novelty to see two of me. I have never done it before. What is quite amazing is that the people and media at large kept it under wraps. Not that we asked them to protect it — it is something that has happened organically.

With the Oscars around the corner and given the fuss that accompanies the selection of India’s official entry for the same, it would be relevant to ask you what’s the right way of bettering one’s chances of getting a film noticed by the Academy?

I have been saying this repeatedly, there is really nothing to do. In Lagaan, we had a peculiar problem — the (Academy) members did not continued…